Failing Forward

[Maxperson]

I think that it maybe has less to do with it being something that happens to "all RPGs equally" right now and more about that style of DMing being the encouraged and expected way to play by so many of the early systems that existed, once upon a time.

My personal theory is that a great many of us started a long time ago and there were a number of things that were different then. First, we were younger and at a young age is when DMs tend to be douche dictators and railroad. Second, there were ONLY those types of RPGs around. These newfangled modern RPGs were around then, so the young douche dictators didn't have those games to railroad in. Combine that with the fact that it's harder to tell if a DM is railroading when nothing is set in stone and you have a situation where the older folk will rarely, if ever see that sort of activity in the newer type games.

 

[pemerton]

My personal theory is that a great many of us started a long time ago and there were a number of things that were different then.

I can only speak for myself.

When I started GMing I fairly quickly discovered that I didn't really enjoy, and wasn't particularly adept at, running Gygaxian-style dungeon-as-exploration-and-puzzle scenarios. I was looking for more story, and for a feel closer to fantasy fiction. I started using techniques - especially around scene-framing, "no myth", and the use of player "flags" - which, 15 or so years later, I discovered had been articulated and developed in a clear manner by designers like Edwards, Luke Crane etc.

I didn't develop "fail forward" on my own, however. I needed to learn that from reading about it in "modern" rulesets.

 

[Maxperson]

I can only speak for myself.

When I started GMing I fairly quickly discovered that I didn't really enjoy, and wasn't particularly adept at, running Gygaxian-style dungeon-as-exploration-and-puzzle scenarios. I was looking for more story, and for a feel closer to fantasy fiction. I started using techniques - especially around scene-framing, "no myth", and the use of player "flags" - which, 15 or so years later, I discovered had been articulated and developed in a clear manner by designers like Edwards, Luke Crane etc.

I didn't develop "fail forward" on my own, however. I needed to learn that from reading about it in "modern" rulesets.

Absolutely. I think we all started off doing things that we later figured out we didn't like and/or were not good and changed how we do things. In high school I probably improvised 5% of the time and that was only NPC conversations, when there was conversation at all. Now I probably improvise 60-70%, maybe even a bit more, and anything from encounters, to treasure, to NPCs, and on an on. I'm still growing and changing from one campaign to the next.

 

[Manbearcat]

I think an interesting question is whether the fail forward/improv style is by (this) definition a railroad (whether the player enjoys it or not being irrelevant). I mean it constrains choice and decision points in steadily and inexorably having everything encountered, created, improv'd, etc. lead to the character's goals or dramatic needs... doesn't it? Isn't that railroading (again putting aside the question of whether the player enjoys it or doesn't) towards a specific or constrained set of outcomes?

I think so. I disagree with the phrase "towards a specific or constrained set of outcomes" though, at least in the general case, for a particular game it may or may not be true. Fail forward games tend to have stake setting, and a lot of latitude in declaring outcomes, so at the ultimate decision point the player decides what happens if his or her quest succeeds, and the referee decides if s/he fails. The player likely doesn't know the full ramifications of failure, and the referee likely doesn't know the full ramifications of player success. The relevant game systems attempt to guarantee narrative closure at such decision points, so goals succeed (maybe with a cost) or fail (maybe with some consolation). There will be no stalemates, last-minute takebacks, revelations that the goal was futile, or that the goal was always going to succeed, and other possibilities that can crop up in more naturalistic games. The uncertainty is provided by distributing the game authority so that no-one knows what's going to happen in the end, or the exact details of that resolution.

I was moreso talking about the outcome of this type of game in the described playstyle always leading towards some resolution of the character(s) needs, desires or goals... There's no chance (at least as I understand the explanations presented in this thread) of offering an option, conclusion, outcome, etc. that doesn't tie into these things... at least not if one is running it properly...

Throwing this spurt of the conversation together to comment on what you guys are discussing. Below is what I think is relevant:

Story Now: Tight, thematic zoom where the exclusive locus of play is the conflict-charged in which the action is centered around what the players (through their characters PC build flags and their actions) have signaled as important content. Typically this focuses on things like relationships, oaths/vows, emotion, redemption and the prioritization of values. PC build + the game's reward/incentive cycle will integrate these components.

GM's job - Follow the rules and your principles. Fast forward past mundane or innocuous goings-on. PCs need to be relentlessly framed into "Action Scenes" whereby they're making decisions that they have signaled that they care about. All table time should be spent exclusively on this. Your "Exposition" and opening of the "Rising Action" should observe (a) the continuity of the prior fiction, (b) genre expectations, (c) PC build archetype (eg don't frame Master Pickpockets into scenes where they've been caught pilfering someone), (d) "Transition Scene" action declarations and resolution, (e) the thematic interests of the players. Your "Denouement" and the fallout tha stems from it needs to be an outgrowth of your principles coupled with (a), (b), (e) above and obeyance to the course that the resolution mechanics has charted.

Player agency - The only thing that matters is that the GM is always following the rules, table time is exclusively spent on stuff we have signaled we care about, and the GM does a proper job with Exposition, the opening of the Rising Action, Denouement, and lets us dictate the outcomes of the Rising Action, Climax, and Falling Action.

---

Sandbox Exploration is quite different (obviously). Play isn't separated into discrete "Action Scenes" and "Transition Scenes" as time spent and exploration of space are centered around a more granular, much more serial nature. Consequently, the resolution mechanics need to enfold that granularity. GMs and players need to observe that granularity, specificity/nuance in the conversation of play and action declarations (per parcel of time:space) will accordingly be more discrete, more concrete/less abstract, and consequently more numerous (obviously). Player agency in these sorts of games demands as much.

Finally, play needs to include material that is effectively conflict-neutral; not hooked directly into thematic components of PC build (if the system even has them in the first place). Haggling with merchants, "state your business" conversations with gate guards, tavern-canoodling, caravan-guarding, random-thieves-guild-encountering, NPC001-escorting, "fetch quests" into Ye Old Crypt. All of these sorts of things need to all be available to the players as menu options so they can effect their expectant agency in exploring the sandbox. Players expect to engage (or not) in this "non-PC-centered" stuff and see how the setting/sandbox evolves as a result of their involvement (or not). The sandbox/setting needs to evolve naturalistically both when the players involve themselves (through the course of engagement of the resolution mechanics and impartial/skillful refereeing) when they do not (via GM extrapolation).

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Those are very different jobs for the GM to be doing and very different "agency expectations" by the players. But so long as the GM does those jobs resolutely and the player's "agency expectations" are met, things are fine.

 

[Manbearcat]

I'm not sure that I agree with your psychological hypothesis as to why pre-authorship can lead to railroading, but I think there is a very clear system reason: the GM is supposed to be using that pre-authored stuff (NPC motivations, metaplot, etc) to constrain the framing of scenes and the success of action declarations. That's what it's for. And multiple posters upthread have said that it's important that sometimes the PCs are thwarted by obstacles they didn't anticipate, because that's what makes the gameworld "realistic" and not just "all about them".

Just to for clarity's sake, my hypothesis was invoked as it relates to an advantage of low-prep (minimal pre-authorship with malleable setting and any off-screen metaplot exists solely to plug into and test the PCs' protagonism) over high-prep (maximal pre-authorship with granular setting and metaplot that exists of "its own volition" - eg GM's mental model replete with unique cognitive biases). I certainly don't think the inherent investment in a creation that you've slaved over (be it building your own world, spending significant $, time, and mental overhead in learning the geography, politics, backstory, cosmology, and relevant orgs/NPCs of FR, or purchasing an expansive module/AP) is the exclusive why a GM might funnel play down the prescribed path of a metaplot.

Systems that are predicated upon significant GM latitude and/or that expressly condone the GM suspending the action resolution mechanics "to facilitate story" are telling the group that play should prioritize the GM's idea of "what's best" with respect to story and the buck stops there. That is more than tacitly advocating railroading. But the fact that it does so up front means that it isn't a violation of the social contract so players really shouldn't be claiming dysfunction because to play at all is an expression of buy-in of the prospects of a railroad!

I think the problem typically lies when a system is wishy-washy on this stuff and the social contract isn't made explicit/banged out prior to play. I mean you can have an amazing amount of granular setting material and off-screen elements in motion (hidden backstory as you like to say). Typically in those games, the GM (who has extreme or complete authority over setting) is going to be the one leveraging his/her own mental framework to parameterize and then perform the model run of the fantasy setting. Hence, his/her own cognitive biases, understanding of genre expectations, and forensic knowledge base (which may be poor, average, or quite good) are going to be the machinery that parameterizes it and then extrapolates into the future. They may be performing this parameterization and extrapolation as objectively as proficiently and objectively as they possibly can. So this evolving setting and offscreen metaplot may feel quite objective and will naturally feel quite intuitive/logical to them. However, embedded within this effort is an enormous amount of variables (at both the parameterization stage and the "model run" - extrapolation - stage). Consequently, the GM's own sense of the fidelity of their work to the principles or objectivity, intuitiveness, and logic may not mesh with the sensibilities of any or all of Becky, Sue, Sam, or Bob.

In essence, the GM isn't railroading the players (constraining decision-points inexorably such that play funnels toward an inevitable outcome or subverting the authentic outcomes of the player action declarations + the resolution mechanics and inserting their own will in its stead). However, the players don't feel that way. The model feels subjectively paramaterized and the extrapolations seem counter-intuitive or illogical.

Or they don't care about the disheveled, sullen, sailor, with four hungry mouths to feed at home, who just had his vessel foreclosed on because he couldn't meet the corrupt banking establishment's new egregious demands. He drowns his sorrows every day starting at dawn's first light in Fishmongers and Fools, the shanty tavern on the docks.

They don't care about him, his family, the corrupt banking establishment, the political structure that backs it, Fishmongers and Fools. And they don't care about the gajillion other of setting elements just like it.

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] comes to mind as I write this. Systems with extreme degrees of GM latitude, extreme degrees of GM authority, and wishy-washiness when it comes to social contract stuff and concrete play procedures are vulnerable to players "feeling" railroaded when, in point of fact, they effectively aren't being railroaded. In those cases though, "feeling railroaded" may as well be "being railroaded."

What I often find a bit weird in these discussions, though, is how games with Schroedinger's hit points and Schroedinger's gorge are conjectured at one and the same time to have some flaws or weakness resulting from that (eg a lack of a "living, breathing" world) but in all other respects play out exactly the same (eg in the way that GM force in determining backstory won't work any differently, and so railroading is just as likely).

+1!

 

[TwoSix]

25 short of 1000. I'm disappointed, this is no "Fighters vs Spellcasters".

 

[sheadunne]

25 short of 1000. I'm disappointed, this is no "Fighters vs Spellcasters".

If we say "Warlord" we can get the whole thread moved.

 

[innerdude]

LOL @TwoSix, yes, we need more angst!

Seriously though, it was really interesting when that article came out like a month ago detailing the first real description of a "fireball" in the pre-Chainmail historical wargame.

I've never done a real tracing of D&D's roots. I know there's books, and articles, and whatever else all over the place that go into all of it, but I've never really gotten into it.

But that article on pre-Chainmail battle rules opened my eyes, because there's so much about D&D that I always took for granted as just being "natural" or "the way it works," or that someone had thoroughly gone through and vetted the mechanics to work a certain way.

And really that wasn't necessarily the case. A lot of what became the game I got under the Christmas tree in 1985 was handed down from wargames and simply passed on because it was what they had. For example, it totally blew my mind when it finally clicked for me (and this was maybe only 3 or 4 months ago) that "hit points" are a relic of wargames that are designed to measure the ability continue remaining effective in combat. They were never really intended or designed to be a measure of a single individual's personal health. They're not measuring wounds, or injuries, or any kind of "health scale"; they exist because in a war game, they represent a unit's ability to remain in the battle. That's it. Hitpoints in war games are at the very least modeling a level of abstraction at least two, possibly three levels above what they're attempting to model in an RPG.

So what happens when you evolve combat and other tactical challenges around that basic paradigm to a single, individual character? You get a specific set of functions, or rules, that work within that basic assumption.

And it's given me a glimpse of why "Story Now!" became a thing---because it's an attempt to go all the way back and say, "Wait wait wait . . . what if we DON'T start the basic assumptions of how an RPG operates from here and instead assume we should start there." Interestingly, even as much as I'm pushing into a more "fail forward," "No myth" style, I don't know that I'll ever 100% completely embrace "Story Now!" either. For example, I've heard descriptions of stuff like Dogs in the Vineyard, Life With Master, Paranoia, etc., and I honestly can't say I'd have any interest in them. I bought a hardcover copy of Legends of Anglerre because I liked the art, but I don't know that I'll ever try Fate, or that my group would even want to either.

I think one of the great things @pemerton tries to do is to at least get people to look inside their own assumptions a bit about the ways RPG rules work. At the very least to be informed about what their own preferences are doing, the assumptions around them, etc. Even if you don't agree with or see how other people like to run their games, I think there's value in understanding what's happening within the context of your own games.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Seriously? You're claiming that that there are no bad DMs out there that railroad in those systems? Somehow only other systems have those sorts of DMs?

I'd disagree with [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] that there are no bad DMs out there that railroad in those systems - but only on a technicality. Railroading is a failure mode - but not all systems have the same failure modes. If you picture the failure mode as the car ending up on the hard shoulder, railroading in one of the systems in question is like ending up on the hard shoulder on the wrong side of the motorway.

This doesn't mean that the techniques in question are without failure modes - simply that they are normally different ones. The most common failure mode is to end up with an indistinct mess of a game with no texture, aim, or driver because the GM isn't sadistic enough to want to see the players have their characters hurt. The second most common failure mode is to end up with a smudgy palimpsest where players have been using player side establishment to solve all their characters problems and too many people have retconned too much so no one knows about anything and no one's challenged.

Neither of those failure modes turn up much with pre-authoring just as railroading doesn't turn up much without pre-authoring.

But ultimately we've got some conversations going on at cross purposes here especially between you and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]. We've got no-myth, sandboxes, and adventure paths as three distinct modes of play (and groups of players in a horseshoe shape normally) and we've got Doylist and Watsonian confusion.

Adventure Paths are very popular - most of what Paizo puts out is adventure paths, as are the few WotC 5e adventures - and they hinge very much on actual pre-authorship. Most APs are over-sized mcguffin quests where in order to get module 3, the PCs must have done the events in module 2 otherwise it makes no sense. So module 2 is quite literally pre-authored in that the PCs will solve it using method X, set down in advance by an author. And in the worst case the PCs job is to bear witness to the NPCs solving the problems, written by some hack author (or some bad GM) before the PCs have even rolled up their characters.

Sandboxes and No-Myth are much closer together - and no-myth is very hard to do IME without rules that go beyond pass/fail (you can do it in 4e and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] does - but I really woudn't care to start there, or to do it in other D&D systems). Both of them utterly reject the idea of writing the ending in advance, and both of them are about challenging the PCs. In the case of sandboxes the challenges are mostly external and driven by the environment or NPCs with their own agendas, while in no-myth play the challenges are much more tailored to who the PCs are and driven by the PCs flaws. And neither of these modes of play produces much railroading as a failure mode (instead it's more aimlessness).

Funny. I run sandbox games and story is reliably generated all the time. People claiming otherwise just can't run a proper sandbox game and/or don't have players that are up to playing in a sandbox game.

Absolutely. And that's hardly unique to sandboxes - no form of roleplaying will ever not create a story.

You say that, but you really haven't given any real reason for it other than you like it that way, and incorrect perceptions of pre-authorship and sandbox play.

Your definition of pre-authoring is meaningless - hence me mentioning the Watsonian/Doylist distinction. John Watson is utterly unable to tell whether that gun mentioned by Sherlock Holmes was always there or whether Arthur Conan Doyle invented it at the last minute. It is only from outside the game perspective that it matters - and only when events in the future (hence pre-authoring) are determined that it is truly pre-authoring.

Speaking for myself, I would say yes. D&D can be run very well with many different styles of play. It even goes out of its way to suggest a bunch of them.

I'd also say that half of them I end up fighting the system (incluing every Paizo adventure path if there's a wizard along). The DM can overrule the system;s strengths - but I didn't sign up to fight the system that way.

 

[pemerton]

I think one of the great things @pemerton tries to do is to at least get people to look inside their own assumptions a bit about the ways RPG rules work. At the very least to be informed about what their own preferences are doing, the assumptions around them, etc. Even if you don't agree with or see how other people like to run their games, I think there's value in understanding what's happening within the context of your own games.

Thank you! Very sincerely.